


Resistance Pilots and Their Tempers

by Draco_sollicitus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Fight-Flirting, His droid can tell you so, Hot-blooded pilots, I sat down to write fluff and this happened, POV Poe Dameron, Poe Dameron Is A Mess, Poe thinks he's flirting, Rey is precious and must be protected, Some Fluff, Some angst, Two-Shot, mild violence, rated t for cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-25 22:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14388597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: Five Times Poe and Rey Fought, and One Time They Didn't(AKA The one where: Poe feels a lot of things about Rey, and he doesn't know how to handle it, so he settles on what he knows best: being a hot-tempered pilot with a short fuse. Unfortunately for him, this Jedi can give as good as she gets.)





	1. Five Fights

**Author's Note:**

> Fair Warning, Poe isn't always 100% nice in this, but he's working through a lot, and he means well.
> 
>  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is definitely a different version of Poe than I've written in the past, but still, I think at the core of all his nonsense, just as smitten as ever.
> 
> Warning for cursing and life-threatening injuries (and maybe even a cliff-hanger, oops)

**1. Distraction**

Rey, Jedi and lost scavenger from Jakku, is distracting.

For starters, her smile looks like sunshine. He notices it the second they meet on the Falcon. She smiles so sweetly, so brightly, when he tells her he knows who she is, that he forgets that they’re in a war, and they may have just lost everything.

He forgets how much they've lost, because looking at her, he feels like he's found everything.

When Finn strides over to clap them both on the shoulder, a few hours later after he’s sure Rose the mechanic will pull through, he grins at them both.

“I’m happy you two finally met! You already should have, honestly.”

“What do you mean?” Rey wrinkles her nose at Finn, and Poe tries hard not to stare at her. She’s just so kriffing beautiful, and it’s a distraction, and he almost misses Finn’s response.

“It’s just funny how you’re both so connected to Jakku: Rey here found your droid after your interrogation, and it was all downhill from there for her.” A hot and heavy stone settles in Poe’s stomach. He’d led the First Order right to her, hadn’t he. “You both told me, separately, that you needed to go back to Jakku – which were words never before said in the history of Galactic Basic – and you both seem deadest on endangering my life in various spaceships.”

Rey laughs, brightly, unbothered by the knowledge that Poe had ruined her life before he’d even met her. The sound is beautiful enough that it manages to diminish Poe’s anxiety, even slightly.

It’s not just her smile that reminds him of sunshine. Rey may as well be starlight personified.

Gods, this can’t go well.

***

Rey settles into Resistance life easily enough, and Poe ~~cherishes~~ enjoys their moments together.

She loves to eat, first of all, something he notices during meal times. When he suggests to her that she chew before swallowing, she apologizes, and then tells him a story so gut-wrenching about her childhood spent in starvation and isolation, he prays to every known god that she never has to feel like that again.

She also can kick his ass in hand-to-hand, and he really shouldn’t enjoy that as much as he does.

And as far as handling his, admittedly high, levels of sass – Rey can spar with him verbally as well, dishing out insults in Huttese that Rose feels compelled to translate every time.

But, something about her just gets under his skin, too. The girl has zero self-preservation, honestly. She’ll take any and every bet or dare, and his squadron is obsessed with seeing how far she can push her limits.

One day, he wanders into the hangar bay and sees Rey juggling no less than _four_ lit mecha-torches. He stares, half in horror and half in fascination, as she accepts a fifth from Snap.

“This isn’t even hard,” she says, sweating lightly from the extreme heat of the tools.

“At attention!” Poe snaps, storming over. His entire squadron freezes and looks at him guiltily. Rey shows no sign of relenting.

“Hey, Commander,” she calls lazily. “Wanna bet I can get up to six?”

“No, I certainly do not. What the hells do you think you’re doing, Rey? Those are tools – _dangerous_ tools – not toys.”

Rey sighs and steps away from the torches, letting them fall to the ground. “I’m sorry, but I don’t really think they’re that dangerous.”

“What if you dropped one, and it started a fire?” Poe’s really more concerned she’d drop it on her foot and maim herself, but he can’t admit that in front of his squadron. “What were you thinking? Were you even thinking? Or did you just want to show off?”

“C’mon, Commander,” Kare interrupts, but she stops when Poe gives her a look of sheer fury.

“Go back to your stations, now. And Rey, maybe don’t disrupt my squadron with your antics in the future.”

Rey turns bright red and jogs out the doors of the hangar, and Poe tries his best to ignore the mutinous looks of his crew.

He hears clapping to his right, and he turns to see Finn, sitting on a crate near Rose’s station. Blessedly, the younger Tico has a helmet on, welding together some parts for a new ship – he doesn’t want to think of what she’d do if she overheard him yelling at her best friend.

“So,” Finn says conversationally. “What the fuck was that, Poe.”

“What do you mean?” Poe crosses his arms in front of his chest. He knows full well what Finn means.

“Why did you yell at our sweet Jedi?” Finn cocks an eyebrow at him. “Did you want her to feel like garbage?”

 _No, of course not, she just scared me, a little bit._ “I don’t want her to feel like – I yell at my squadron, too,” Poe protests. “Seriously, ask any of them.”

“You don’t yell at them in front of other people, especially people they don’t know very well,” Finn points out, brow lowered in his anger. “Seriously, Dameron, you were an ass. She’s been through a lot, and she was just trying to have some fun, and cheer other people up at the same. You know about her childhood, and Rey was tortured for hours, too. She deserves some fun. And you could be nicer to her.”

Finn’s right, but Poe isn’t happy about him being right. He kicks more than one durasteel wall on his way to find the runaway Jedi.

Beebee tips him off that she’s outside the base, in the forest. Poe blinks against the sun when emerges, and he looks around – she’s nowhere to be seen.

“Come to finish the job, Dameron?”

He looks up, and there she is, perched in a tree twenty feet off the ground. Rey smiles at him, and he smiles back, involuntarily.

“Need company?” He asks her, and she nods and grins. Poe climbs the tree, relying on the skills he developed as a young boy clambering around the moon of Yavin 4, and he reaches the branch she’s sitting on. “You come out here often?” He asks, looking out over the terrain.

“Yeah,” Rey looks up at the sky. “Didn’t see a tree until I was twenty, you know? I like trees. They’re very…sturdy.”

Poe grins at her, about to make a snarky comment, but he’s stopped when she says, “Sand isn’t like that at all. It changes all the time, and you never know where you stand. You look up, and if you aren’t paying attention, you can completely lose your way. It erases the past for you, whether or not you want it to.” She puts her hand on the trunk of the tree and closes her eyes. “Trees though. They carry the past inside of them, years and years of growth and change. You know what to expect with them.”

“Huh,” Poe swallows, hard. “Never thought about it like that.” _Beautiful, and brilliant, and fascinating. You don’t stand a chance._

“Huh,” Rey parrots back, grinning at him, eyes open again. “Do you really think about anything, ever?”

Poe sticks his tongue out at her, not above the childish gesture, and she mirrors it. They both laugh, and settle into a companionable silence. He realizes that he never apologized to her, but looking over at her face, content and serene, he thinks that maybe she’s not the kind of person to hold grudges, and maybe she’s already forgiven him.

Poe tries to fight down the knowledge that Rey, the Jedi, the mechanic, the scavenger, is so far above him, he’ll never be able to keep up with her.

**2\. Vocabulary Enhancers**

It’s an average day on base, about four months after the Battle of Crait. Poe’s tinkering idly with a broken comms-link, and listening to BB-8 whistle cheerfully.

“Hey buddy,” he calls to his droid. “Could you be a pal and give me a light?”

[Of course, Master-Poe] it answers. It rolls over and extends a mechanic arm, a small gas light appearing at the edge.

Holding it in the flame, Poe solders the small, finnicky piece in place carefully, and then blows on the orange-red metal until it cools. “You’re a life-saver, Beebee.”

[Fuck yes, I am].

Poe drops the comms with a yelp. “What did you just say?”

[I said, ‘fuck yes, I am,’ Master-Poe] Beebee supplies cheerfully.

“Where did you – how did you?” Poe stares in horror at the orange and white droid. “Who taught you how to curse?”

[Hero-and-Savior Rey! She taught me the words ‘fuck,’ and ‘kriff,’ and ‘kark.’] BB-8 whirs anxiously. [Your heart-rate has increased, Master Poe. Are you feeling alright?]

“Oh, she didn’t,” Poe mutters, pushing his chair away from his desk and standing. “Not my droid, nope.” He storms down the hallway after barking, “You, stay put!” at Beebee. The droid doesn’t listen, and beeps anxiously as it follows him through the base.

It’s late morning, which means the mechanics are still taking advantage of the slightly cooler temperatures to work in the hangar bay. He storms in, and looks around before jogging to his destination.

Poe raps on the side of a ship that has thin, long legs peeking out from underneath. “Jedi!”

“Hey, Poe!” Rey chirps, sliding into view with a streak of grease on her pert nose. “How are you?” She smiles at him, and it’s just as luminous as ever, but he can’t be distracted from his purpose. He wonders if she can feel how worked up he is in the Force. “What’s…what’s wrong?” She sits up all the way and looks at him, smile frozen in place. Yeah, she can sense it.

“You taught my droid how to swear?” Poe doesn’t even bother greeting her back, and he tries not to notice how much her face falls. He must be imagining it, anyway. “Beebee is an innocent, Rey, and you taught it how to curse like a common smuggler.”

“He isn’t a child, for kriff’s sake!” Rey throws her hands in the air, not even bothering to drop her wrench. It clangs against the underbelly of the X-Wing she’s working on. “How was I supposed to know ‘fuck’ wasn’t already in his lexicon? All the droids I knew on Jakku already had –”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m watching you, Jedi.” Poe points at his eyes, then to hers, and back to his. Rey rolls her eyes magnificently and mirrors the gesture before flipping her hand into a signal that _definitely_ should get her written up for insubordination – if only she didn’t share his rank.

Poe mutters under his breath and storms away, the back of his neck burning red. Beebee follows along, beeping apologies mournfully, and then, not as quietly as it should:

[You were already watching her, Master-Poe. By my count, your attention was focused on Hero-and-Savior Rey no less than fifteen times during the last—]

“And that’s enough outta you!” Poe yells at his traitorous droid, shoving him away with his boot, praying to the Force that the mechanic-inventor-Jedi-wunderkind behind him didn’t hear any of that.

**3\. Low Point**

After the cursing incident, Poe decides that he hates himself a little bit. Rey smiles at him tentatively in the mess hall, avoids making eye contact with him, and answers his questions with one or two words. He misses her spritely conversations and cheerful jabs, and he wishes he could take back yelling at her over something that took him less than five minutes to fix in Beebee’s programming.

On top of all that, she’s making a clear effort not to curse, at all, around anyone.

She zaps herself with a hydrospanner one day while she’s helping Jess fix Black Three. “Oh! Oh, motherf – _fathier.”_ She catches herself and looks at Poe, who’s perched on a lift some five feet away. He smiles at her, reassuringly, and she turns pink. “Motherfathier.” Beebee rolls forward, dragging a medi-pack, and Poe curses internally that he hadn’t thought to grab it himself.

“You okay, s—?” He cuts himself off. _Sunshine_. He’d almost called her ‘sunshine’. Gods, he’d never hear the end of it from his squadron, or from Beebee.

“I’m fine, Commander!” She answers cheerfully, slapping a bacta-patch on the small burn. “I’ll be good as new in a few.”

“Good to hear. Be careful, please, I’d like for you to keep all your limbs intact, if at all possible.”

Rey waves in acknowledgment and returns to work on the engine while smiling. When the clanging of metal on metal resumes, Pava turns and fixes Poe with the most evil grin he’s ever seen.

“What?” He asks, crossly.

“Nothing,” Jess sings before mouthing, “Poe and Rey, sitting in an AT-AT – k – i – s – s—”

“Jess?” Rey calls from inside the ship. “I think I found the source of your problem.”

“Yes, Rey?” Jess asks sweetly, still grinning at Poe, who’s fuming silently.

Rey re-emerges, clutching a taped-up fuselage piece. “What the hell did you do to this?” Luckily, she doesn’t notice the tension rippling between Jess and Poe.

“It’s a funny story, Jedi.”

As grumpy as he is, Poe still laughs while Jess tells the story of how she’d ‘forgotten’ to pull up on her compressor on the most recent mission, and when her assigned droid had run, screeching, away from her upon landing, she’d had to fix it herself. With duct tape.

They’re all still laughing half an hour later when they head to lunch, and Poe thrills when Rey settles down on the bench next to him. It feels the same as when he accelerates into Hyperspace before a dogfight – _adrenaline_. Something about Rey causes a flood of adrenaline in his system. Maybe that’s why he’s always spoiling for a fight with her.

Regardless of the reason for his consistent short temper, he decides he’s never going to yell at her again at the end of the meal, when he slides his extra bread-ration onto Rey’s plate and she looks at him with eyes shining to the point that he loses his breath.

“Thank you, Poe,” she says shyly, taking the bread and inhaling gently, nose pressed to the roll, eyes closed in near-bliss. “I was still hungry.” Her smile is blinding when she opens her eyes to look at him, really look at him, and it takes him a second to remember to respond.

“You’re always hungry,” he teases her. He tries to ignore the flare of sadness in his stomach at the idea of Rey hungry, like she had been for so long. Why doesn’t he do nice things for her more often, especially when it makes her look like _this?_ He doesn’t know where the urge to tug on the end of her braid comes from, but he doesn’t fight it, at all. It makes Rey giggle, so he counts it as a victory.

Jess’s smug face across the table doesn’t even make him irritated; instead, a small, pleased bubble forms in his stomach, and there’s no clear indication of when it will go away.

Weird.

***

_The Resistance will not be intimidated by you._

_Best pilot –_

_FN-2187—_

_It’s in a droid, a BB-8 unit –_

_It’s funny how you’re both so connected to Jakku, Rey here found your droid after your interrogation, and it was all downhill –_

_Rey was tortured for hours, too –_

_Rey –_

**_Rey_ ** _._

Poe gasps awake in his bunk, panting heavily. He wipes at the sweat on his hairline and shudders. The nightmares have settled into an irregular pattern these days, swinging wildly between his time on _The Finalizer,_ the loss of his friends on _The Raddus,_ and his own paranoid mutiny against Holdo, who turned out to be the better commanding officer by lightyears.

Tonight though. Tonight’s hellish dream centered around the image of Rey, the brave, beautiful Jedi, strapped to a table not unlike the one he’d become acquainted with during his time with the First Order. He doesn’t know where the picture of her, restrained but defiant, had come from, but its crystal clearness and vivacity tells him it’s more than just his imagination. He doesn’t know what to do with that haunting memory, a memory that isn’t even his, but still is one that he’s responsible for.

After all, her capture and interrogation at the hands of Kylo Ren was connected to his failure. Her torture and misery were completely linked to his inability to block out Ren; if that monster hadn’t pulled the intel from his head, he never would have taken her, never would have forced himself into her own mind. So much of what happened wouldn’t have come to pass if he’d just – been _strong_ enough.

He’s stirred from his reflection by a tentative knock at his door. Beebee remains charging in its port, unbothered, and Poe stands up shakily, smoothing out his hair before opening the door.

The second the door opens, he remembers that he fell asleep without a shirt, and the wide, doe eyes of Rey tell him that may have been either the best or worst idea of his life. She stares at him in shock – her eyes fixed in particular on Shara’s ring, hanging off the necklace he never takes off – before she blinks and asks, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Poe nods against the lie. “Yeah, I’m fine. Come on in.”

Rey obliges his request and comes to settle on the floor of his room, her back leaning against the bedframe. He wants to offer her a seat on his bed, but he thinks that might not be the best idea, not when it’s well after midnight, and he’s an emotional wreck, and she’s that pretty. Instead, he sits down next to her, shoulder to shoulder.

“What happened?” Rey asks quietly.

“Nightmare,” Poe shrugs, not seeing the point in hiding that from her.

“I get them too,” she whispers, leaning into him. Poe closes his eyes against how good it feels, her warmth pressing up against him. Gods, she’s incredible, and real, and alive. He thanks the Force that she’s sitting next to him, the best reminder he has that his fuck-up hadn’t cost her, and them, everything.

“Yeah?” Poe smiles at her grimly. “That’s no good.”

“No, but they’re better now.” Rey smiles at her hands, clasped in her lap. “It helps to have so many friends here. Rose is across the hall from me, and she makes a very good cup of tea.”

“That does sound nice.” Poe hums softly, and he’s about to offer her a trip to the mess hall, where he’s pretty sure he can scrounge up some tea, when Rey drops her head into his shoulder, and he forgets pretty much everything in the known universe except her.

“I heard you,” Rey says, softly. “It woke me up, Poe.”

“What?” They’re three hallways away from each other, and he’s screamed in his sleep before – there’s a reason no one wants to bunk with him – but how could she have possibly heard that through all this durasteel?

“In my head,” she explains, shrugging. “I could feel you, or hear you, I’m not sure which. I saw your dream, Poe. And – I don’t blame you for what happened.”

She may as well have thrown him in the ‘fresher and set it on full blast, on the coldest setting. “You saw…you saw that?”

“Yes,” Rey says. Poe’s entire body is in lock-down, stiff as possible, and she sits up, lifting her head off his shoulder. “Is that – does that bother you?”

“Yes, it fucking bothers me,” Poe can’t be bothered to regulate the tone of his voice. The sudden change in emotions feels like whiplash. “Rey, you – you went into my head?”

“No!” Rey looks at him in horror, hand raised in supplication, but Poe doesn’t back down from glaring at her. “No, I swear, it wasn’t on purpose, I – I can just feel everyone,” she explains, wide-eyed. “All the time. And I know you, so it’s easier to listen to you and your emotions, and tonight it was unstoppable. I saw your dream while I was asleep and when I woke up, I could tell you were upset, Poe, and I wanted to help. I didn’t try to go into your head – it was like you were shouting at me. Which, you know, I’m fairly familiar with.” She attempts a rueful grin _,_ but it doesn’t make him feel any better.

It feels like an exposed nerve, the fact that she can hear how messy his head is, that she can so easily look into his emotional state and count all the ways he’s lacking.

The knowledge of his unwilling vulnerability does not do wonders for his mood, so he snaps, “Well, do me a favor, and don’t poke around in my head, okay? Gods, that’s exactly what Kylo Ren does, Rey, doesn’t that bother you at all?”

He regrets it _immediately,_ oh fuck, he wants to take it back the second it’s out of his stupid, too-big mouth, because Rey flinches away as if he’d struck her.

“Wait, I—”

“No,” Rey shakes her head. “You’re absolutely right. I know I can be too much like Ben. Like Kylo, I mean.”

Poe’s done a lot of karked-up shit in his life, but somehow making Rey look this sad has to be the worst. “No one thinks that, Rey, honest, I’m just—” _Fucked up. Angry. Terrified. Bantha poo-doo._

“It’s fine, Commander.” She rises stiffly from the floor and walks to the door. “I am sorry to have disturbed you. I’ll be sure to avoid finding you in the Force, in the future. My sincerest apologies.”

The doors hiss open and shut, taking the Jedi with them, before he can say another word. The last he sees of Rey, she’s wiping her eyes with the fabric wrapped around her wrists.

It goes without saying that he doesn’t sleep at all the rest of the night.

**4\. Joy Ride**

Poe doesn’t have a lot of time to apologize to Rey over the course of the next few weeks. The only time he really sees her is in strategy meetings, but she’s almost always surrounded by higher-ranking officials afterwards, and he can’t seem to catch her eye, no matter how long he waits at the edge of the room for her to be free.

She doesn’t come to meals in the mess hall, and when he asks Finn about it, he shrugs. “Girl’s been taking meals in her room,” he says. “Rose joins her sometimes, but she says Rey is doing a lot of meditation these days. Sometimes she doesn’t eat at all, she’ll go in to a Force Trance and won’t come out for hours. You know, Jedi shit.” Finn wanders away, not seeming to catch the distress threatening to swallow Poe whole.

Poe isn’t that smart, never has been, but he has a feeling he knows where the inspiration for her sudden isolation has come from.

Poe isn’t smart, and neither is he all that young anymore, coming up on 33, so when he tries to jump over some abandoned parts in the hangar bay, having spotted Rey walking past the doors, his foot catches on the top of the pile, and he twists the wrong way.

His ankle breaks, and he stews while Kalonia places the cast around the joint, declaring that he has to rest for the next three days, absolutely no flying.

“I’m grounded? For three days?” Poe asks in indignation. “I can fly with a broken ankle, c’mon Doc.”

“Four days.” Kalonia amends, primly. Poe recognizes a lost cause when he sees it, and decides to stop fighting the good doctor.

***

The to-stations sirens wail overhead, and Poe grits his teeth from his bunk. He’s been banned from Command, banned from the hangar, banned from his X-Wing. He’s feeling mulish at the turn of events, and he switches off his comms in irritation, not wanting to hear his squadron, led by second-in-command Snap, navigate a battle without him. He literally cannot help them from the ground, not when Leia insists he stay off his feet, and he’d rather not suffer through the painful agony of hearing them when there’s nothing he can do.

A junior officer comes by three hours later to tell him about the end of the battle. “No losses reported from Black Squadron,” she says cheerfully, and Poe feels a little better. “Great flying, all around. And you made a good call, letting Commander Rey take Black One up.”

Poe stands up so quickly he sees black spots. “I did what, now?”

“The Jedi Commander flew Black One,” the private looks at him in confusion. “They’re flying back now. Did you want to greet them before debrief?”

“Yes. Yes I did.” Poe huffs in anger and walks down the hall as quickly as he can with his foot in this stupid cast. He leaves his crutches, knowing that they would undercut the severity of his screaming when he gets that Jedi out of his X-Wing.

Finn’s already in the hangar when Poe shows up. “Hey, man!” He greets. Finn reads his expression and gets very quiet. “Oh. She didn’t…actually ask you, did she.”

“No, Finn,” Poe grits between his teeth. “No, she did not.”

“It went really well, though,” Finn’s obviously aiming for soothing. “The girl’s never crashed anything in her life. To be fair, she’s only been flying for the last few months, but hey, she’d never flown the Falcon before, either, and we escaped an entire fleet of First Order ships back on Jakku.”

“What do you mean, _never flew the Falcon, either._ ” Poe stares at his friend in horror. “She’s – she’s never flown an X-Wing?”

“Huh, would you look at that, General Organa’s calling me,” Finn looks down at his blank comms-link and pretends to take a call. “Yes, General?”

Poe’s distracted by the crack of planes hitting atmo, and he folds his arms around his middle at his assigned dock, waiting for Black One to land.

When it does, and the canopy pops open, Poe bites his tongue to stop himself from just unleashing a stream of obscenities. Beebee drops down from his station and whirs towards him, saying [Do not fret, Master Poe, Hero-and-Savior Rey is the best pilot I have ever seen]

Poe scowls at his droid, and it hoots as it rolls away.

“Hey Commander,” Rey rubs her neck awkwardly and climbs down the ladder. She stands a few feet away from him, but he closes the distance rapidly.

“What were you thinking, Rey?” He yells, and she blinks once, before her mouth sets in a stubborn line. She isn’t going down without a fight, he realizes, and that thought zips down his spine in a way that isn’t entirely innocent.

Fuck. Don’t get distracted, Dameron.

“I was thinking I wanted to help,” Rey says, obviously forcing herself to stay calm; but no, they’re past the point of calm, now. He steps even closer, until they’re almost nose to nose, but she doesn’t step away from him or push him, so he doesn’t flinch either.

“You’ve never flown an X-Wing before!” Poe knows he’s way too in her face, but he can’t back down. Finn appears at the periphery of his vision, looking like he’s about to intervene if they start pushing or shooting each other. “Gods, Rey, you could have _died,_ you could have gotten another pilot _killed_ –”

“But I didn’t!” She snaps. “I didn’t, Poe. BB-8 walked me through the whole thing, and besides, don’t pretend that you haven’t taken similar risks – Finn told me all about how you stole a TIE-Fighter to get off _The Finalizer.”_

To their left, Finn shoves his hands in his pockets and begins to slowly back away. Poe violently points at him and says, “No, no, you stay there, Captain. So you can tell Jedi Rey over here that _that_ was karking different!” Poe yanks his hands through his hair, distantly aware that it very much isn’t that different. “There were extenuating circumstances, so that particular risk was vital to our survival!”

“Hells, the high and mighty Poe Dameron ‘can fly anything,’ right? Just not the rest of us?” Poe takes a deep breath, already gearing up to have it out here in the hangar, broken ankle be damned, but Rey cuts him off. “Look, Dameron, I’m sorry you’re pissed that you’re grounded, but Black One was just sitting there. I would have fixed it for you if I’d taken a hit, but I took down fifty fucking bogey fighters, and saved half your squadron ten times over. So you can get off your high fathier any time now.”

“ _My_ high fathier?” Poe splutters.

Of course, his squadron chooses then to amble over to the shouting match. They surround Poe and the stubborn Jedi girl, and he has a bad feeling they aren’t going to take his side in this.

“Don’t be so harsh, Commander,” Pava looks at him with concern. Yep, there it is. “Rey was great today, really. It was like having you out there.”

“Well, you, but twice as pretty.” Snap winks at the rogue pilot cheerfully, and Rey smiles back at him and Jess. Poe gets maybe 65% angrier when he sees how soft her smile is – and only a little bit because she never, ever smiles at him like that, not since she found him after a nightmare a month ago. _Maybe she doesn’t smile at you because you’re never nice to her, Dameron,_ a small voice whispers in the back of his head. _Gods, Snap’s right, she’s so pretty._ Poe makes a mental note to kick his own ass later, the traitor.

“You’re all dismissed,” Poe snaps, hobbling forward to examine Black One, and ignoring the mutters of his squadron. He’ll make them run extra laps later. He’s scowling up at the cockpit, trying as hard as he can to banish the endearing image of a certain, freckled pilot perched there laughing exhilaratingly with his helmet on her head, when he hears someone cough behind him.

“Commander?” It’s Snap.

“Yes, Wexley?” He turns around and looks at his friend, strangely exhausted.

“We – we just thought –” It’s entirely unlike the large man to be anything but confident, so Poe raises his eyebrow in anticipation. “Gods, Poe, don’t be such an ass.”

“What?” Poe puts his hands on his hips and frowns up at Snap. “What do you mean?”

“The girl’s a great pilot, is all,” Snap shrugs. “We’d be happy to have her on the squadron. And, if it’s any consolation, she went back and forth a thousand times about jumping in before your droid convinced her. And it’s a good thing Beebee did, too: we would have had our asses handed to us without her.”

“Oh.” Poe shifts uncomfortably, and tells himself it’s just the cast that makes him feel so wrong-footed.

“Yeah, oh. And, she tried to get you on the comms for permission, but _somebody_ had switched them off because he was in a bad mood.”

“Oh.” That seems to be the only word he knows, all the other words swallowed up by the fire eating at his face.

“Mhm.” Snap rolls his eyes, and Poe doesn’t even yell at him for the disrespect. He’s earned it. “Look, maybe you should go apologize to her, considering she’s the last hope for the Resistance and all.”

“Yeah,” Poe rubs the back of his neck and starts limping towards the exit of the bay.

“And Commander,” Snap calls at his back. “Try not to be so _you_ when you apologize.” His chortling laughter cuts the severity of the statement, but Poe winces at the truth in the middle of it.

Rey hadn’t gotten far – she’s standing at the end of the first hallway, back against a wall, eyes closed, fingers at her temples. He walks up quickly, confidently, ready to apologize and make good with the pretty, sweet-faced Jedi.

_Gods, I’m doomed._

“Hey, Jedi,” Poe begins, but she lifts a hand to stop him, eyes still closed, one hand still pressed to her temple.

“Not right now, please.”

“No, look, I just wanted to—” he begins, but her eyes open, and he sees, to intense horror, that she’s crying.

“You can finish yelling at me later, Commander Dameron. Please, I just need to—” Rey shakes her head and covers the sides of her face once more with her small, calloused hands. Poe lurches forward, intending on putting his hand on her shoulder to show his support, or wrapping her up in his arms and pressing a kiss into her forehead, telling her that he’s sorry, he’s so fucking sorry— he wants to hold her until she understands that he wouldn’t be this much of an ass if he didn’t care – but she’s already spun around on her heel, and is sprinting down the next corridor.

Poe stands frozen, struck by a sudden realization, until she disappears from view.

[Hero-and-Savior Rey is very upset!] Beebee screeches as it comes roaring from the direction Rey had just gone.

“Yeah, I know.” Poe clears his throat and then looks down at his droid.

[Ass] it mutters, slamming into his good leg.

“Yeah, I know that, too.”

Only Poe fucking Dameron could piss off the woman he’s in love with this badly.

**5\. Reckless Rey-dangerment**

They’re all called to Central Command four weeks later.

He hasn’t seen Rey more than a handful of times, but he’s tried his hardest to smile at her each time, to try and telegraph with his eyes how sorry he is. She smiles back, sometimes, but mostly she just looks lost, tired, miserable.

He goes to the surface of the planet they’re housed on, and picks some flowers after Beebee and Rose both tell him how much Rey likes them. He finds himself rubbing the back of his neck outside her door, and then, before he can lose the nerve, he knocks, quickly. There’s no answer, and he sighs before setting them down on the ground.

“Poe?” He hears a voice that’s somehow become his favorite voice in the galaxy call after him.

“Rey,” he answers, spinning on his heels. She’s standing in her doorway, dressed in her blue tunic, the one that makes her freckles look so much more golden somehow, staring at the flowers on the ground.

“What are these?” She asks curiously, bending down to pick them up.

“They’re for you,” he says, smiling hesitantly. “I just thought, you know, you’ve looked so tired lately, and not yourself, and…”

Rey quirks an eyebrow at him. “You’re saying I look like garbage?”

 _Oh kriff._ “No! No, not at all, I just thought –”

That’s when both their comms chirp, calling them to Command. “Thank you, by the way,” Rey says as they walk side by side down the hall.

“You’re welcome,” Poe mutters, face burning. When they enter Command, he goes to his regular seat, and turns around, ready to offer the adjacent seat to Rey. She’s been called to Leia’s side, though, and another commander sits down next to him.

Leia does not have good news for them.

“The Resistance has called for a cease-fire in the old Hosnian quadrant,” Leia says, the holo-board lighting up the swath of space. “Innocent civilians have taken on too many hits, and widespread chaos and destruction has wreaked havoc on millions of people. If we both exit the system, they can have time to rebuild their homes and their lives. We sent the terms to the First Order last week, and we have received our answer.”

Silence descends over Central Command while Leia holds up the print-out of the transmission. She sighs heavily before reading.

“Kylo Ren says he will honor the cease-fire,” Leia says, looking up from the paper. “But only if Rey comes to Takodana, where they first met, completely alone.”

“If by ‘met’, he means, ‘kidnapped me and then tortured me,’ yeah. Same difference, I guess,” Rey bites her lip and then sighs. Poe thinks he might vomit onto the uniform of the commander sitting next to him. “I’ll do what I have to do for the Resistance, General. You know that.” Her hands floats to her lightsaber, and Poe is suddenly, terribly afraid. _She can’t be serious._ “I’ll report for transpo as soon as you want, ma’am.”

She looks so small at the front of the room, suddenly, and Leia cups her cheek, seemingly not caring about decorum or the thirty pairs of eyes watching the interaction. “Rey, honey, you don’t have to go. There has to be another way, I know there has to be another way.”

“It’s okay, Leia.” Rey smiles, sadly, and Poe fights against the urge to leap to his feet and argue with her in the middle of Command. “I’m not afraid of Kylo. There’s still good in your son. Maybe he needs me to help him find it.”

Leia nods, and announces that Rey will be wheels up in thirty.

Rey walks towards the exit, and Poe stands to follow her. Leia tries to catch his eye, but Poe shakes his head and continues storming after the Jedi.

He catches up with her about five hundred feet away from Command, sacrificing his dignity to jog after her the last couple yards. “Rey!”

“Hmm?” She looks up and sees him, her feet stumbling to a halt. “Yes, Commander?”

He winces at the detached tone, and hopes it’s just because she’s slipping further into her Jedi role in the face of her mission. Which reminds him:

“You’re not going.” His sentence is firm, final. He notices, somewhere in the part of his brain that can still notice things that aren’t her eyes, that they’re standing close, too close, as he’s leaned in to talk to her.

“I _am_ going,” Rey shrugs, seemingly unbothered by the lightyears worth of solid argument Poe has built up.

Thousands of good arguments, so of course, he goes with: “Nuh-uh.” Poe shakes his head, viciously. “Nope, sorry, not happening, don’t trust him.”

“It’s not your call,” she snaps, suddenly angry. “Besides, there’s no guarantee he’s going to do something bad. He could just want to talk.”

“Trust me, he doesn’t just want to talk.” He’s grown more and more aware that the Supreme Leader may have more than just a crush – albeit a crush where he also wants to supremely murder her—on Rey.  

“Why does it matter what he wants to do? I’m ready for anything.” Rey’s just as worked up as he is, and her eyes dart down to his mouth. _Oh._

Then, she closes her eyes and breathes deeply before opening them again, looking calm, detached once more. “I thought you’d be happy about this.”

“What? No—Rey, why would I be happy about our only Jedi going to fight a genocidal maniac?” Poe stares at her, not moving away from her, even though their noses aren’t more than four inches apart and this is not the most appropriate military conversation he’s ever had. _Probably because this isn’t about the Navy, you kriffing idiot._

“How flattering,” Rey rolls her eyes and pulls away slightly, and Poe has to clench his fist to stop himself from reaching out and pulling her back. “I thought you’d be happy because it’s necessary for the ceasefire. And besides, Dameron, I know you can’t stand me. This – this shouldn’t be a problem for you.”

He’s an ass. Oh gods, he’s an ass, Finn was right, and Snap was right, and Beebee was right. Oh gods.

“Rey, I don’t –” He clears his throat. “That’s not how I feel at all.”

“No?” Rey quirks her nose up. “You don’t have to lie, Poe, it’s okay if you hate me. I’m not popular with a lot of people, never have been. It’s nice to hear that you don’t want me to die, but I will not be the last Jedi. There will be others, and they will come to join the Resistance. I know it.”

“If you’re so all-knowing, how come you have no kriffing clue that I wouldn’t want you to die? How come you would think, for a second, that I hate you?” Poe demands.

“Because you told me to stop looking at your feelings,” Rey says, looking sad suddenly. “I haven’t – I’ve been blocking your feelings for months now. You were so furious with me, Poe. I couldn’t bear you being that angry with me again.”

Oh, kriff, he’s a monster. “No, _no,_ I was at fault that night, Rey, not you. I’m so sorry for making you think you’d done something wrong.” Her face shifts from sadness to confusion, but hells, he’ll take it, anything’s better than that sad kicked-Ewok look. “You can’t go, especially not when you think that I hate you. Gods, please listen to me.” Poe tugs on his curls in exasperation, but he freezes when a small hand reaches out to grip his wrist. Rey gently disentangles his fingers from his hair, and smiles at him sadly.

“It drives me crazy when you do that,” Rey explains quietly, still holding his wrist. She releases it when he doesn’t move or say anything, but he’s too thunderstruck by how right it feels to have her touch him.

“It drives me crazy when you do things without thinking them through,” Poe counters.

“If you don’t hate me, why are you always yelling at me?” Rey questions, nose wrinkling. And gods, it’s distracting, she’s always distracting, he can’t fucking think straight when he’s around her.

Which is why he’s always yelling.

“Because I’m an ass,” he says, lamely. “I’m an ass, and you don’t deserve to be yelled at like that, I know, and I’m sorry.”

“A lot of apologies today, Dameron.” Her laugh is sweet, but still sad. “I’ll take it as your goodbye, then.”

“Don’t say goodbye,” Poe whispers, leaning in closer. Fuck, she can throw him across the base if he pisses her off – and he knows she can, is more than capable of doing that – but it’s worth it. He can’t think of a single real reason to not do this, not to try it, not when she’s so close to him, and they’re not yelling at each other for once. Her hazel eyes are magnetic, celestial bodies with their own gravitational pull, and he’s helpless to it, helpless to tiny mechanics from desert planets with sweet smiles and sharp tongues.

“What should I say, then?” Rey asks, and his entire body hums when her warm breath hits his mouth – they’re so close, falling into each other. “What should I say if I can’t say goodbye?”

“Say you’ll come back,” he answers, readily. “Say that you’ll see me again.”

“Okay.” The space between them is insignificant, almost non-existent, now. “I’ll come back, Poe. And I’ll see you again.”

She’s gone by the next time he blinks, her edge of her tunic whipping around the corner, and Poe’s left alone in the corridor.

He hadn’t been able to convince her not to go, he’d gotten distracted, and now she’s gone, off to fight the galaxy’s least favorite war lord.

Poe’s never been so sad to have lost an argument.

***

He just sits in the hangar bay and waits, ignoring everyone’s questioning stares and attempts at conversation.

He sits there for almost a full day, chin resting in his hand.

Why hadn’t he kissed her? She wouldn’t have been able to leave if he’d kissed her – he could have kissed her silly, could have shown her all the reasons why she drives him mad, could have explained that he yells because he’s never been great at his feelings, and fuck he has so many of them, and he’s just _lost_ when it comes to her, which is ridiculous, because he doesn’t think he’d particularly found his place in the galaxy until she’d shown up and saved their asses on Crait.

If she doesn’t come back –

No. She’ll come back. She’ll come back, and he’ll kiss her, and he’ll do this right, he’ll do this the way she deserves. If he’d kissed her when she left, she might have some kernel of doubt that he’d done it in a fit of adrenaline, a desperate attempt to keep her at his side. It will mean more when he kisses her after she comes back, because it will be a sign that he wants to build something with her, when all this is done, when the war is over, and they can find a home, together.

Gods. Still a romantic, then. No wonder he’s been fighting this for so long.

He sleeps in odd shifts, next to the empty dock, and Finn brings him some food, which Poe pokes at indifferently.

He’s considering getting in Black One and flying to Takodana, Darth Ultimatum be damned, when he hears the unmistakable sound of a bird hitting atmo. He frowns at the sound, though – she didn’t leave Hyperspace until hitting the edge of atmosphere. She’s going to be sick to her stomach when she lands. But still, she’s back, and that’s all that matters.

Poe leaps to his feet and bounces on his heels.

Her borrowed X-Wing soars into the hangar and settles into place, and Poe’s grinning, gods, she came back, just like she said. He can kiss her now, and it will mean even more, and she’ll have no reason to doubt him when he kisses her.

The canopy hisses open, and Poe looks up expectantly. Rey looks exhausted, ashen, and startles slightly when she sees him.

“You,” Rey groans, starting to stand up. “Gods, couldn’t it have been anyone else?”

“That’s flattering,” Poe smiles. Honestly, it’s no less than he deserves. Of course he had to go and kark everything up, alienate the one woman he’d sacrifice everything for, offend her until she’s convinced he wants to see her dead, insult her in every way imaginable, all the time. If she threw her lightsaber at his head, he’d understand. Hells, he’d probably thank her.

Rey’s shaking when she stands up, and Poe frowns. “You came out of Hyperspace too quickly,” he scolds, feeling like a mother Porg as he walks forward to hover at the edge of the ladder. “You have to be more careful, Rey.”

“Can you – yell later?” Rey gasps, clutching her stomach.

“Yeah, sure, Jedi: don’t worry though. We’ve all done it, and let me tell you, it _will_ fuck with your sys—” Rey tries to step out of the X-Wing, but collapses to her knees. “Rey? What the fuck – _medic_!” Poe screams over his shoulder. He’s up on the ladder a second later, leaning into the cockpit. “You okay, Jedi?”

Rey’s head is propped up against the console, one hand gripping the seat, the other pressed to her stomach. “You were right,” she mumbles. “He didn’t want to talk.” Her arm lifts away, exposing a jagged wound along her side.

“Oh fuck, where’s that medic,” Poe moans. “Call Kalonia, for fuck’s sake,” he shouts at Pava, who’s just walked into the hangar. She pales and exits again, sprinting for Med Bay. “Hang on, Sunshine, just hang on,” Poe begs her, and she smiles at him faintly, eyes drifting shut.

“I think this is the first time you haven’t been angry with me in months,” she whispers. “It’s nice. Should get stabbed more often.”

“Don’t say that,” Poe says, quickly. “Fuck, don’t say that.” He half leans into the X-Wing and tries to examine the wound. It’s at least ten inches long. “What did he do to you?”

“Same thing I did to him,” Rey says, sounding far away. Poe puts his hand on her cheek, trying to get her to open her eyes. Her skin is clammy, and strangely cool. “Scar for a scar.”

“Just stay awake,” Poe says, moving his hand to her shoulder and jostling her as non-violently as possible, not wanting to aggravate the wound. Which looks like it was _cauterized,_ for fuck’s sake, what the fuck, she’s always so casual about that goddamned lightsaber, and it’s capable of doing _this_? Rationally he’d known that, having seen Kylo Ren cut down Tekka with so little effort, but this is up close and it’s been done to the woman he loves, and holy shit, where the _fuck is that medic._

“Poe?” Rey asks, eyes still not opening.

“Yeah?”

“I can hear you,” she says softly. “Sorry.”

“What?” Poe blinks. She can hear him? That means she heard – oh fuck.

“For what it’s worth,” her breathing is ragged, and when he puts both his hands around her face, her skin is terrifyingly cold. “I love you, too.”

“Rey?”

She’s unconscious, slumped in the cockpit, and Poe’s frozen, terrified. He has to be physically pulled out of the way by Snap and Iolo when Kalonia and her team of medics come into the hangar, and they hold him by the arms when he tries to fight his way to Rey’s side.

“Let them do their job, Commander,” Iolo says. Poe won’t stop thrashing, not when Rey’s so close, she’s on the stretcher, but they’re taking her away, and _no,_ not again, he can’t lose her. “Let them – Poe! Calm the fuck down!”

The stretch bearing Rey disappears into the corridor, and Snap and Iolo finally release him when the hangar doors close.

“Rey,” Poe says, stumbling forward, and then sprinting after them.

“Let him go,” he hears Pava snapping at Iolo. Poe runs to Med Bay, faster than he thought possible, and he skitters to a halt outside the observation window of the operating room. Kalonia’s working furiously, aided by several medical officers and droids, and he stares, attention locked on the heart rate monitor next to the table.

He breathes for every other beat of Rey’s heart, and he begs her, silently, praying that she can still hear him, to push through this, to fight through this.

She’s so damn good at fighting, he thinks wearily, resting his head on the glass. She just has to fight this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I sat down to write fluff and this happened!
> 
>  
> 
> I hope the +1 makes up for it <3
> 
>  
> 
> (PS I have most of a modern AU where they meet at a bar while dancing, and lots of ABBA is involved, let me know if you'd wanna see that/aren't tired of my nonsense)


	2. A Change in Pace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey wakes up; Poe's in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: mild violence (Poe hurts himself by accident in anger), still cursing, and some references to ~adult~ activities, but nothing that would warrant above a PG-13 rating.

+1

Rey’s put into a medically induced coma for two weeks, in an effort to diminish further damage to her abdominal cavity. They have to use the most cutting edge technology – experimental, actually – to try to regenerate some of the cells of her stomach, as the blade had just barely caught on part of the organ. Luckily, miraculously, no other organs were hurt, and the procedure is showing great signs of success.

Still, she’s in a coma, and machines are helping her breathe, and she spends most hours of the day submerged in a bacta tank, her frail but powerful body suspended in the liquid, her pale, unresponsive face looking close to death under the Med Bay lights.

And Poe, well. Poe’s definitely handled things better.

He punches his door panel so hard one day, frustrated that it wouldn’t open, that he legitimately breaks it. Rose fixes the panel personally, casting worried glances over her shoulder at him the whole time. When she’s done, she opens one of the pockets on her utility pants, and pulls out a bacta patch. “That knuckle might be broken,” she says softly, handing it to him before walking quickly away. The blood continues to drip from his hand onto the duracrete for ten minutes after she leaves before Poe remembers what he’s supposed to do with the patch in his hand.

Poe yells at his squadron, a lot – over their drills, over their formations, over their response times, over the conditions of their bunks – until he breaks down sobbing in Jessika’s arms on a Centaxday, six days after the last time he’d spoken to Rey. “I know,” Jess whispers into his hair while stroking his back. “I know, Poe. We miss her, too.”

Leia forcibly removes him from Central Command herself when he kicks an older T-3 model that had failed to bring a suitable update on Rey’s condition. “No, sorry, Commander, can’t have you hurting the droids,” Leia informs him primly, dragging him into the hallway by the arm, with much more strength than expected. Then, once outside, she looks at him with greater sympathy. “You have my full permission – no, my orders – to wait in Med Bay. You’re temporarily relieved from duty.”

It’s the kind of edict that would have driven him to mutiny not even nine months ago. But, the woman he loves could be dying, could never wake up, so he takes the command for what it is. A blessing.

Poe doesn’t move from Rey’s side after that, except to stand in the ‘fresher every 24 hours, and to take meals when Finn shows up to literally drag him away.  

Finally, Kalonia deems Rey’s condition stable enough to remove the supporting machines, and takes away everything that doesn’t have a monitoring utility. _But what if it’s too soon?_

Poe’s gritting his teeth –apparently hard enough for the motion to be audible, because Kalonia turns around with her eyebrows raised into her hairline.

“Something to say, Commander?”

“No ma’am,” Poe answers firmly. Kalonia has obviously noticed his permanent presence at Rey’s side, but she’s been kind enough to let him stay past visiting hours, without comment, no matter how odd it seems to everyone else.

He’d overheard nurses three days ago whispering in the hallway that “it’s so strange to see Commander Dameron sitting still for more than five minutes – I’ve never seen that before.”

It hurts, weirdly, that everyone’s so surprised that he cares about Rey this much. He loves her. Fuck. He loves her. He needs to start showing that more.

Poe dozes off in his chair waiting for Rey to wake up after Kalonia walks away.

“It could be a few hours,” she whispered on her way out. Poe shrugged at that and hunkered down.

When he can’t nap anymore, he stands up and stretches, feeling his lower back pop. Right. He’s not in his twenties anymore, he can’t just sit in a crappy chair for days on end and not feel the consequences. He sighs and heads for the door, figuring he’ll take that shower now, so he can avoid Finn making stink jokes at lunch.

His foot freezes, still in the air, at a sudden and random sensation. It feels like a cascade of warmth down his back, starting at the back of his hairline, all the way down to the small of his back. All the sound in the universe rushes into his ears, and then back out, a stillness and peace he hasn’t felt, well, ever descending into his bones. It feels like pulling out of a perfect dive, it feels like walking up to his dad’s house, it feels like –

_Sunshine._

“Hey,” he hears a hoarse whisper, and he turns around, stunned, to see Rey blinking her eyes open.

“Hey, yourself,” he whispers back, just as quietly. Poe settles back into his chair, hovers his hands over her body, and then smooths a palm over her hairline. “Welcome back.”

“Sorry,” Rey coughs, weakly, and Poe grabs the water Kalonia had thought to left from the side table. He holds it for Rey, her shaking hand coming to hold the straw. She coughs again, and he places it back on the stand.

“What are you sorry for?” He asks, brow furrowing.

“For almost dying.” She smiles at him, and it’s a quarter the strength of her normal smile, but gods, he’ll take it.

“Yeah, well, you’re alive, so I’ll let it slide. This time.” He winks at her, trying to hide the fact that he’s thirty seconds away from bursting into tears.

“You gonna finish yelling at me, now?” Rey laughs, weakly, and tries to sit up. Poe places a firm hand on her shoulder and guides her back into place.

“No,” he shakes his head. “No, I think it’s safe to say that I won’t be yelling at you for a while.”

“What if I really deserve it?” Rey asks, smiling tiredly. “Like, what if I drop a lit welding torch inside Black One trying to juggle?”

“Even then,” Poe murmurs, grabbing the hand less connected to wires. “Even then, sweetheart. Wouldn’t yell at you.” There’s an impossible wave of emotion building inside him. Relief, foremost. Then, exhaustion. And anger – at what had happened to her; happiness – from seeing her awake, hearing her beautiful voice; and _love,_ so much fucking love for this impossible woman, who had come back, who had fulfilled her promise to see him again.

Then, he remembers what she had said, right before she passed out in the X-Wing. She can hear him, again. Poe raises his eyes to meet hers, and feels his face contort in an embarrassed half-smile. “Guess you heard all that, too, huh?”

“Don’t worry,” she whispers, stroking her thumb against the back of his hand. “Don’t worry, Poe. I feel it too.” Her eyes close again, and he realizes she’s falling asleep, but naturally. “You won’t have to be alone again.”

Rey’s sleeping, her pale skin backlit into a strange blue color by the Med Bay lights, her brow covered in a light sheen of sweat from the effort of talking, and he’s never seen anyone so perfect. Poe’s been aware that he’s in love with her for months now; he’s known it down into his bones that he loves Rey, Poe loves Rey, but he hadn’t known what to do with it.

He knows, now. He’s pretty damn sure he knows what to do. Poe loves Rey, and somehow she loves him too. And neither of them have to be alone, ever again, and he’ll make sure there isn’t a day in her life that goes by where she doubts his love for her.

***

He helps Rey walk for the first time, a couple days after she wakes up. She leans into his side, laughing at her shaking legs.

“I’m like a baby bantha,” she giggles. Poe holds her tighter and tries to haul her up next to him, but gently.

“Easy, bantha baby,” he says in a sing-song voice. “Easy, girl.” Rey sticks her tongue out at him, but eventually completes the five laps of the room mandated by Kalonia.

She catches Poe staring at her, after he steers her back to her cot and helps her sit back down, the bed elevated so she can sit up with her legs out in front of her.

“What?” Rey asks, nose wrinkled. “Did I do something wrong?”

Oh, gods. “No,” Poe shakes his head, vehemently, and then catches her hand in his. “No, Sunshine. I’m just really proud of you.” He kisses her knuckles as an excuse to duck his head and hide his face, but Rey’s cleverer than that. Her hand twists away from his hold on it, and her fingers wrap around his chin.

“Poe?” There’s a clear question in her voice, and he looks up at her, afraid of what she’ll see on his face. “Will you kiss me?”

There’s a flare-up of his old, ornery spirit, and Poe grins at her. He knows it’s probably a shadow of his cocky, flirtatious grin that he spent years perfecting, but honestly, it feels more like an actual smile than anything else ever has on his face. “I just did, sweetheart.”

“No” Rey wiggles impatiently, and godsdamnit that’s cute. “No, kiss me for real, flyboy.”

“Hmm.” Poe pretends to think about it, and then leans in slowly, giving her time to back out. “I guess I could. I’ve only been waiting, what, six months to kiss you?”

“Really?” She breathes, eyes wide. “That long?”

“Yeah,” He smiles self-consciously. “Yeah, I mean, I know that’s kind of embarrassing.”

“No, it’s just – me, too, nerf herder.”

“What?” Poe blinks in surprise.

“I wanted to kiss you since that day when we climbed the tree together. Ugh, we could have been – this whole time – gods, we’re idiots.”

Her thin, small hand fists in his shirt and tugs him in, with a force that’s just as bizarrely strong as it is shaky. Rey presses her mouth to his, enthusiastically, and Poe kisses her back with all he has, still holding her hand with one of his, the other coming up to rest along the sharp edge of her jaw. He’s just starting to run his tongue along the seam of her lips, when he hears an increase in the speed of her heart monitor.

“Oops,” he says sweetly, pulling away. Poe kisses her once more, chastely, on the lips, and once on the nose, before pulling away completely. “Better stop before Kalonia comes in and bans me.”

“Why would she ban you?” Rey asks, breathlessly.

“Because,” he says, nodding his head to the monitor where the display shows that her heart rate is still elevated. “I’m bad for your health, Sunshine.”

“Hmph.” Rey pretends to be mad for about ten seconds before her face splits into a cheerful grin. “That was really nice.”

“It was,” Poe agrees, smiling. “It was wonderful. You were worth the wait, Sunshine.”

“Yeah,” Rey nods, blushing. “You were, too.”

***

Poe’s sitting with Rey in the hangar bay about a month later. It’s a not-so-secret secret that they’re together, and he has his legs up on a crate while Rey flicks through the week’s reports from Leia. Poe’s issued his commands for the rest of the day to his squadron, and his own work is done, so he’s just enjoying the early evening with the woman he loves, his head on her shoulder. He could fall asleep, he really could.

But then he overhears his squadron talking.

“Check this out, guys,” Snap whispers. Poe catches the dialogue easily because it’s like the guy isn’t even trying to lower his voice. “Seriously, watch. Dameron’s gone soft since the Jedi started giving him the time of day.”

_Oh, this will be fun._

“Hey Dameron,” Snap says lazily, walking up and then turning his head over his shoulder to wink at the squadron behind him. Even his wife, Kare, looks at him exasperated. “I was thinking about how you said we needed to do fifteen reps of drill before sundown. So. I was thinking – maybe we don’t today? Since you’re all happy now that you two have boned, and all.”

“Excuse the fuck out of me?” Poe lifts his head off Rey’s shoulder, eyes widening briefly before narrowing. “What the fuck did you just say to me, Snap?”

“I said – uh –”

“I am your _commanding officer,_ Snap!” Poe stands up and Rey doesn’t even look up from her holo-pad, probably smirking. “And you come up to me and insinuate that I’m – that a Jedi is fraternizing? With me? I beg your fucking pardon? And to suggest that any untoward relationship between myself and Commander _and_ Jedi Master Rey could get you out of finishing your _drills_?”

“Uh – no, sir.”

“That’s what I thought. And ‘bone’?” Poe gets in Snap’s face, and the tall man swallows. For a guy who’s seven inches shorter than this lieutenant, Commander Dameron knows he can be terrifying with his finger next to your nose. “ _Bone?_ To use that sort of language about not one, but _two_ commanding officers? What did you hope to accomplish, exactly?”

“Abort!” Snap shouts over his shoulder. “Abort, abort, abort.” He turns tail and runs, past the rest of the squadron, who have broken down in giggles.

“I don’t know why you all look so happy,” Poe snaps. “You all have twenty reps to run now, thanks to Wexley.” They groan but wander away to get it done.

Poe settles back down on the bench with a huff, and glowers after his team. That is, until a small hand begins to pull through his curls, blunt nails scratching at his scalp. Poe makes sure no one’s looking at him from Black Squadron, and then he tilts his head back and purrs like a godsdamned Loth-cat.

“To be fair, Commander,” Rey says lightly. “We did just bone, in the utility closet.”

“Gods, Sunshine,” Poe groans, only half because what she’s doing to his hair feels so good. “Please don’t call it that.”

“What, then?” She looks up from her report curiously. “Fucking?”

“Making love,” Poe says, hotly. “We were making love.”

“I hardly think any of what transpired in that closet constitutes as romantic. You’re only saying that because you don’t want Beebee to figure out what fucking is,” Rey accuses.

“Guilty,” Poe admits softly, ducking his head down to kiss a trail from her earlobe to the top of her tunic.

“And now you’re thinking about whether or not we can ‘make love’ in the cockpit of Black One without anyone noticing, or if we'd even fit.”

“Guilty,” Poe breathes, nuzzling against the column of her throat. “Gods, sweetheart, you’re just so pretty, I can’t help myself.”

“Hmm,” Rey laughs. “If I hadn’t just seen you verbally dismantle a man twice your size, I’d say you were getting soft, Commander.”

“I think you’ll find that I’m anything but soft.” Poe pulls back to wink at her cheekily, and Rey swats him with the holo-pad. “Sorry, sorry.” He places his hands on either side of her face, and leans in to kiss her cheek, her other cheek, and then her nose, slowly, so slowly. He murmurs, “I’m only soft when it comes to you, Sunshine.” And Rey sighs, happily, and doesn’t that just add ten years onto his life. “Gods, I love you.” Poe kisses her, full on the mouth, and it’s his turn to sigh when she kisses him back. It gets progressively deeper, progressively leads _somewhere,_ and Poe’s lost, he’s fucking lost, there’s no way back from this, how much he loves her.

“We can definitely fit,” Rey says, pulling back to pant for air. 

“Hmm?” Poe’s still feeling like he got hit by a dreadnought.

“We can fit in the cockpit, come on,” Rey stands up and tugs on his hand. “This is one of the few times I’ll admit that you’re right, take advantage of it, Dameron.”

“Yes ma’am,” Poe leaps to his feet, and takes her hand, both of them giggling and looking over their shoulders to see if anyone sees them climb the ladder to Black One.

They think the coast is clear, but Jessika Pava turns around at the exact wrong moment. When Kare asks her what she’s smiling about, five minutes later, Jess smirks.

“Nothing, nothing,” she says serenely. “I just love a good ending, is all.”

She obstinately refuses to explain what she means for the rest of the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 <3 <3
> 
>  
> 
> I'm not saying there's a smutty one-shot that fills in some of the missing parts of this, buuuUuUuUUuUt
> 
> (And yes, that whole Wexley thing was an ENTIRE reference to the BEST SCENE IN TV HISTORY, aka Captain Ray Holt from B99 screaming BoOooOOOoNe? at Rosa Diaz for two minutes)


End file.
